Nigel Farage has hailed Reform UK’s “almost unbelievable” early performances in former leave-voting seats, predicting that the party will win “many, many seats right across the country” as the election unfolds.

Lee Anderson, the former Conservative deputy chair who became Reform’s first MP earlier this year when he joined the hard-right party, won its first seat of the night when he held his Ashfield constituency.

The MP described Ashfield as “the capital of common sense” in a victory speech after polling 17,062 votes, beating Labour on 11,553. Anderson’s old party was beaten into fourth place by an independent candidate.

Reform was projected to win as many as 13 seats in the general election, according to the 10pm exit poll. Declarations in north-east England showed it outpolling the Conservatives to come second to Labour.

The projection also indicated that Farage, who returned as leader of the party last month, was set to win the Essex seat of Clacton.

Farage used a video posted on X to deliver his first response to the exit poll, saying: “It’s midnight, there are two results in from the north-east of England that put Reform on 30% of the vote; that is way more than any possible prediction or projection. It is almost unbelievable.

“And what does it mean? It means we’re going to win seats, many many seats, I think, right now, across the country. But to watch the TV coverage, it’s almost comical.

“There’s not a single representative on there from Reform UK. Mainstream media are in denial just as much as our political parties. This is going to be 6 million votes-plus. This, folks, is huge.”

While there was caution about how the poll of 20,000 would ultimately translate into seats, it was clear that millions of people had voted for the hard-right, anti-immigration party, which has previously indicated its intent to destroy the Conservative party.

Ben Habib, Reform’s deputy leader, was the first of the party’s senior figures to seize on the BBC/ITV/Sky survey projection. He tweeted: “This is a huge bridgehead. This is politically seismic. This is the beginning of the fightback for the nation state of the United Kingdom.”

Early declarations underlined the surge in support for the party in what had been strong Brexit-supporting areas of north-east England, where Reform outpolled the Tories in a number of seats.

While Farage has always kept his cards close to his chest about how many seats he expected to win, the projected seat share is believed to be much higher than what he could have hoped for.

Farage’s agent, Peter Harris, told the Guardian that it was early days but the party appeared to be in a strong position. “We could see that there was a strong turnout. In places like Jaywick, the queues were long, and had people in there who had not voted before or had given up on voting until now,” he said.

The expected vote share opened up the possibility of the electorate returning Reform MPs in target seats from Essex, the Kent Coast, south Wales and Yorkshire and the Humber.

Richard Tice, Reform’s chair and the man who stepped aside so that Farage could return, appeared to be in a strong position to win in the Lincolnshire constituency of Boston and Skegness, which has been represented by Tory Matt Warman since 2015.

Others who were in a strong position included the former Southampton Football Club chair, Rupert Lowe, who was running in Great Yarmouth, which has been held by the Conservatives since 2010.

Margaret Hodge, the former Labour minister, likened the challenge of Reform to that posed by the British National party, which she faced down during a battle for her Barking seat in 2010. She told the BBC: “It’s where they put their vote if they don’t have trust.”

A note of caution was sounded by Prof Sir John Curtice, the psephologist and lead election analyst for the BBC, who said that the projected seat shares for Reform UK and the SNP were the two figures about which he and others were least certain.

More from the Guardian

The White House has described the latest Hamas ceasefire proposal for Gaza as a “breakthrough” establishing a framework for a possible hostage deal, but warned that difficult negotiations remained over the implementation of the agreement.

A senior US official said the Biden administration received the latest Hamas offer “a couple of days ago” and had been studying it ahead of a 30-minute telephone call between Joe Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday.

“The conversation was detailed, going through the text of the agreement, constructive and encouraging, while also clear-eyed about the work ahead [and] the steps that must be put in place to finalise this deal and then begin the implementation,” the US official said of the call.

Netanyahu was due to convene a meeting of his security cabinet on Thursday evening to discuss the Hamas proposal, and is dispatching a negotiating team to the Qatari capital, Doha, for talks with US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators in the coming days.

Israeli officials said the delegation would be led, as usual, by David Barnea, the head of the Israeli intelligence agency, the Mossad.

The White House predicted that the Doha talks could convene as early as Friday. It said the Hamas proposal was in line with the three-stage peace deal that Biden outlined on 31 May, which has formally been accepted by the Israeli government and endorsed by the UN security council.

US officials had said an earlier Hamas response contained elements that were negotiable but some that were not. The White House reaction to Hamas’s new response was much more positive.

“I think the framework is now in place and we have to work out the implementation steps,” a senior US official said. “What we got back from Hamas was a pretty significant adjustment to what had been their position, and that is encouraging. We have heard the same from the Israelis.”

The official stressed that the agreement was not yet final, however. “This does not mean this deal is going to be closed in a period of days. There’s significant work to be done on some of the implementation steps,” they said.

The main obstacle in negotiations until this week had been widely differing views on how the agreement would move from its first phase to its second.

The first phase involves the release by Hamas of elderly, sick and female hostages during a six-week truce, an Israeli withdrawal from Gazan cities, and the release of Palestinian detainees held by Israel.

The second phase would involve the release of all remaining hostages as well as the bodies of those who have died, a permanent end to hostilities and a full Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. Phase three would mark the start of Gaza’s reconstruction.

The transition from the first to the second phase was to be negotiated during the first six-week truce, and the ceasefire would continue as long as good-faith negotiations continued, but Hamas wanted stronger guarantees over the path to a permanent ceasefire.

Netanyahu had publicly cast doubt on whether that would happen, vowing to complete the destruction of the militia, which has run Gaza for nearly two decades and which launched a surprise attack on southern Israel on 7 October.

“Some of the key issues on the transition from phase one to phase two have really been a stumbling block. I think we’ve had a breakthrough in that area,” the senior US official said, without giving details of the text presented by Hamas.

“Between phase one and phase two … you have to have conditions and arrangements in place. I think that is something that is obvious, but it’s something that Hamas has resisted,” they said, adding that Hamas had dropped its resistance to the imposition of conditions before reaching a permanent ceasefire.

The senior US official said many implementation issues to be negotiated in Doha involved “some sequencing and then a release of detainees”.

“I have to say, given the recent developments, we do believe there’s a pretty significant opening here, and we welcome the prime minister’s readiness to try to seize that opening by empowering his negotiating team to engage directly in Doha over the coming days,” the official said.

Keir Starmer is on course to win a landslide UK election victory, returning Labour to power and bringing a crushing end to 14 years of Conservative rule.

The 10pm exit poll, compiled on behalf of the three main news broadcasters, predicted Labour would win 410 seats, securing a majority of 170, to the Conservatives’ 131.

The Liberal Democrats were expected to take 61 seats, the Scottish National party 10, Reform UK 13, Plaid Cymru four and the Greens two after Rishi Sunak surprised the country six weeks ago by calling a summer poll.

The results appeared to confirm that Labour’s “time for change” message struck a chord with voters after years of chaos and division under the Tories, including the Brexit vote and its fallout, the handling of the Covid pandemic and the Partygate scandal.

At the last general election in 2019, the Conservatives had a majority of 80, with 365 seats to Labour’s 203. The SNP won 48 seats and the Lib Dems had just 11.

If the exit poll is correct, Labour has secured a huge swing away from the Conservatives, who will have suffered their worst ever performance, and away from the SNP in Scotland, where John Swinney’s party will have been crushed.

Reform’s polling at 13 seats appears to suggest the hard-right party has squeezed the Conservative vote across the country, with Nigel Farage favourite to win the seat of Clacton in Essex on his eighth attempt to enter parliament.

It will pose a major challenge for the Starmer government who will have to work out a strategy for how to fight the rise of the populist right, a trend reflected across Europe.

The Liberal Democrats, who appear on course to quadruple their seat haul, are expected to have further dented the Tories by making gains across the south-west and home counties in the “blue wall”.

Starmer is set to be the fourth Labour leader to oust the Conservatives since the second world war, and the first Labour prime minister for 14 years. Rachel Reeves will become the UK’s first ever female chancellor in a new Labour government.

The exit poll suggests Labour has won back vast swathes of the north of England and Midlands known as the “red wall”, taken by the Tories in 2019, as well as making major inroads against the SNP in Scotland.

Starmer’s victory appeared to have fallen just short of Tony Blair’s historic 1997 win in which Labour won 418 seats and a majority of 179 seats. Starmer, like Blair, has fought the campaign on a platform of promising change after more than a decade of Tory rule.

Labour’s expected win marks a huge turnaround for the party, four years after Starmer took over as leader and less than five since Jeremy Corbyn led the party to a disastrous defeat, its worst result since the 1930s.

The exit poll also indicates the Conservatives have suffered a catastrophic wipeout, with their worst ever performance, losing dozens of seats they won for the first time in 2019 under Boris Johnson.

Voters appear to have punished the party for years of scandals under Johnson, the financial crisis caused by Liz Truss, and Sunak’s failure to keep his pledges to turn the country around.

The loss of office also follows a weak Conservative campaign by Sunak, marred by a gambling scandal and the prime minister’s early departure from a D-day ceremony, which led cabinet ministers to concede defeat even before polling day.

Starmer thanked those who voted for him, saying: “To everyone who has campaigned for Labour in this election, to everyone who voted for us and put their trust in our changed Labour party – thank you.”

Pat McFadden, Labour’s national campaign coordinator, said: “Keir Starmer’s transformation of the Labour party has been remarkable. He has put country before party and has transformed Labour from a party focused on itself to one back in the service of the British public.

“We have campaigned as a changed Labour party, ready to change Britain. Whatever has been claimed throughout the campaign, the Labour party has assumed nothing about the result and has worked tirelessly to bring our message of change to people across the country.

“Britain’s future was on the ballot at this election. And, if we are successful tonight, Labour will get to work immediately with our first steps for change.”

If the exit poll is correct, Sunak is likely to announce his resignation as prime minister on Friday morning before Starmer goes to Buckingham Palace to be officially anointed by King Charles as his successor.

Starmer is expected to give a short speech on the steps of Downing Street before beginning work on his first steps in government. Sources say they expect most, if not all, of the cabinet, to be appointed by the end of Friday, with more junior ministers being confirmed over the weekend and possibly early next week.

The party is holding a rally in London in the early hours of Friday morning – an event that could echo the party’s event to mark Blair’s victory at the Royal Festival Hall shortly after winning the 1997 election.

Starmer has said, however, that the celebrations are likely to be short-lived, with only a few weeks to begin legislating before parliament breaks for its summer recess.

The Labour leader said on the campaign trail this week that he would extend the parliamentary term to achieve more before recess, and warned his shadow ministers he expected immediate results.

“I’ve said to the shadow cabinet: ‘I don’t want you having a phone call or a meeting the day after the election that you could have had six months before the election,’” he said on Wednesday.

The new prime minister will then travel to the Nato summit in Washington DC next week – his first chance to position himself as a world leader.

At the same time, his ministers will already have started to roll out their plans for domestic reforms. Angela Rayner, the shadow housing and communities secretary, will begin work on a new draft of the national planning policy framework, while Ed Miliband will immediately overturn the de facto ban on onshore windfarms.

Labour then has less than two weeks before presenting its first package of legislation in the king’s speech, including legislation to bolster workers’ rights and to set up Great British Energy, the energy generation company at the heart of Labour’s green plans.

A meeting of the European Political Community will follow immediately afterwards in London – Starmer’s first chance to lobby officially for improved trading relations and to begin work on a new deal for cross-Channel asylum seekers.

Having led a tightly controlled campaign with little in the way of spontaneous interaction with the public or new policy ideas, Starmer is under pressure to spell out in greater detail how he intends to begin tackling problems ranging from Britain’s prisons crisis to record NHS waiting lists.

Reeves is likely to present her first budget in the autumn, where she is expected to announce Labour’s first tax policies, including tightening non-dom tax breaks, extending the oil and gas windfall tax and taxing private school fees.

Reeves has also drawn up plans for increases to capital gains tax and inheritance tax, as Labour looks to avoid swingeing public sector cuts that are implied by the current fiscal forecasts.

In a sign that Starmer was already mentally preparing for the shift to power, he told reporters on Wednesday: “I’m really pleased that four and a half years of work is being vindicated, because this has not been an easy gig.”

Kylian Mbappé has branded the first-round results of France’s snap parliamentary election “catastrophic”, urging voters to turn out in force and fend off the threat of a National Rally-controlled government when polls open for the runoff vote on Sunday.

In the latest of several interventions by members of the France national football team, the influential captain Mbappé warned that the country must take its chance to ensure the far right, anti-immigration party is unable to seize power in what has become a tumultuous political battle.

“It’s an urgent situation,” he said when asked for his thoughts on a parlous state of affairs that saw National Rally win 33% of the popular vote in last weekend’s first round. “We cannot let our country fall into the hands of these people. It is pressing. We saw the results, it’s catastrophic. We really hope it’s going to change: that everyone is going to rally together, go and vote, and vote for the correct party.”

Mbappé emphasised the importance of voting “now, more than ever”. France’s players are currently in Germany for the European Championship but they have maintained close attention on events back home and, unlike their English counterparts, a number of them have felt comfortable commenting on political matters.

Speaking on Monday after their victory over Belgium, the defender Jules Koundé said he was “disappointed” with the level of support for a party that “seek to take away our freedom and take away the fact that we live together”. He stated that previous non-voters must be persuaded to the ballot box in order to ensure the extreme right do not gain an absolute majority.

Before the tournament began, the forwards Marcus Thuram and Ousmane Dembélé both made similar exhortations to those eligible to vote. Mbappé joined them, saying at the time that he is “against extreme views and against ideas that divide people”.

Those comments were criticised by, among others, the National Rally leader Jordan Bardella. Mbappé, who recently signed for the Champions League winners Real Madrid, is France’s star player and a figure whose voice holds considerable weight among the country’s youth.

France face Portugal in a quarter-final on Friday and it means Mbappé, who will again play in a mask after breaking his nose in the group stage, will face a former Real Madrid forward in Cristiano Ronaldo. It is widely held that this could be the moment Mbappé, who is 25, takes the baton of greatness from the 39-year-old Portugal legend. “He is one of a kind,” Mbappé said. “He has shaped football, inspired generations, scored goals. I can only sing his praises.”

Hurricane Beryl is barrelling through the Cayman Islands after causing death and destruction in Jamaica.

The British overseas territory is bearing the brunt of the hurricane, which has been causing “utter devastation” in the Caribbean since Monday, when it almost destroyed parts of Grenada and St Vincent and the Grenadines.

Now a category 3 hurricane with wind speeds of up to 120mph (193km/h), Beryl has brought thunderstorms and gale forces winds to the Cayman Islands.

Earlier on Thursday, meteorologists said the hurricane was 50 miles south-west of Grand Cayman and moving away from the island. However, they issued strong reminders to stay sheltered until the all-clear was given.

On Wednesday, Beryl touched down in Jamaica, forcing airports to close and sending nearly 1,000 people into government-designated shelters.

The hurricane’s eyewall skirted Jamaica’s southern coast as a powerful category 4 storm, ripping off roofs, uprooting electric poles and trees and causing widespread flooding.

“It’s terrible. Everything’s gone. I’m in my house and scared,” said Amoy Wellington, a 51-year-old cashier who lives in Top Hill, a rural farming community in southern St Elizabeth parish. “It’s a disaster.”

According to the most recent reports, many people in the country are without water, and on Wednesday night, officials said 60% of the population was without electricity.

On Wednesday evening, there were reports of a man being washed away, and confirmation that a woman had died in the parish of Hanover after a tree toppled on her house, bringing the death toll to at least nine across the countries affected by the hurricane.

But officials in the multi-island countries of Grenada and St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) have said the death toll could increase as they struggle to assess the damage on some islands.

In Venezuela, President Nicolás Maduro told state television three people had died, four were missing, and more than 8,000 homes had been damaged.

Mexico’s tourist centres of Cancún and the wider Yucatán peninsula lie in Beryl’s predicted path. Cancún’s airport was thronged with tourists hoping to catch the last flights out before the storm arrived. Workers filled bags with sand and boarded up doors and windows of businesses for protection.

Mexico’s defence ministry opened about 120 storm shelters and asked visitors to heed instructions on evacuation or other measures.

Beryl is the 2024 Atlantic season’s first hurricane and at its peak earlier this week was the earliest category 5 storm on record. The prime minister of SVG has decried a lack of political will in western Europe and the US to tackle the global climate crisis.

Scientists say human-caused climate breakdown has increased the occurrence of the most intense and destructive tropical storms, because warming oceans provide more energy and increase their strength.

As the storm charts its deadly course through the region, leaders are seeking support for what they describe as the “herculean effort to rebuild”.

The SVG prime minister, Ralph Gonsalves, expressed his concern about accessing grants to rebuild, while his Grenadian counterpart, Dickon Mitchell, told reporters he was hoping to trigger his country’s catastrophic risk insurance policy.

Since Monday, individuals, groups, countries and regional and international organisations, including the Caribbean Community (Caricom), the UN, and the Commonwealth, have pledged support to the devastated islands.

On Thursday, the Royal Navy said it would deploy its warship HMS Trent to deliver aid, including bottled water, basic emergency supplies, and equipment to the Cayman Islands.

King Charles has asked to be kept closely informed of the developing situation, and it is understood he will be making a substantial donation to the disaster recovery and relief efforts.

In a message to the people of the Caribbean who had been affected by Beryl, he said: “My family and I have been profoundly saddened to learn of the dreadful destruction caused by Hurricane Beryl across the Caribbean. Above all, we send our heartfelt condolences to the friends and families of those who have so cruelly lost their lives.

“I have seen the extraordinary spirit of resilience and solidarity that people across the Caribbean have shown in response to such destruction – a spirit which has been called upon too often – and so I also send my particular gratitude to the emergency services and volunteers who are supporting the rescue and recovery efforts.

“At this most difficult of times, please know that our most special thoughts and prayers are with all those whose lives, livelihoods and property have been so utterly devastated.”

“A broken-down pile of crap” on the verge of “quitting the race” was Donald Trump’s summation of Joe Biden in a surreptitiously filmed video leaked on Wednesday.

The clip, obtained by the Daily Beast, shows the 78-year-old former president sitting in a golf cart, holding a pile of cash, and with son Barron alongside, as he offers an analysis of the 2024 presidential campaign.

Trump asked a group off-camera: “How did I do with the debate the other night?” before predicting that Biden would not seek re-election.

“He just quit, you know – he’s quitting the race”, Trump said. “I got him out of the – and that means we have Kamala.”

The White House and most Democrats maintain Biden will remain the party nominee, though voter polls suggest that he has slipped six points behind Trump and that the vice-president, Kamala Harris, could be a stronger Democrat candidate in November.

“I think she’s gonna be better” as an opponent, Trump continued in the video, but added: “She’s so bad. She’s so pathetic” and appeared to say: “She’s so fucking bad.”

Biden’s campaign has denied he is stepping down. “Absolutely not,” said the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, on Wednesday. Several Democratic governors repeated the phrase “in it to win it” after meeting with Biden.

The Trump campaign has not commented directly on the video but on Wednesday predicted the “total collapse” of the Democratic party following Biden’s poor debate performance and mounting calls for him to step aside.

The Biden-Harris campaign responded to the video in a statement: “The American people have already seen low after low from Donald Trump,” it said, described the video as a “new rock bottom” for him.

The clip was leaked hours after the Trump campaign released its first attack ads against Harris, who is the most likely candidate to replace Biden if he decides to quit the race.

Leaked video and audio clips have previously been a source of embarrassment for Trump, including in 2016 with the notorious Access Hollywood tape in which he described women in vulgar terms and bragged about sexually harassing them.

In the latest video Trump expressed disdain for Biden’s ability to deal with foreign adversaries, including Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, and China’s president, Xi Jinping.

“Can you imagine that guy dealing with Putin?” Trump asked. “And the president of China – who’s a fierce person. He’s a fierce man, very tough guy. And they see him.”

New research aimed at identifying foods that contain higher levels of PFAS found people who eat more white rice, coffee, eggs and seafood typically showed more of the toxic chemicals in their plasma and breast milk.

The study checked samples from 3,000 pregnant mothers, and is among the first research to suggest coffee and white rice may be contaminated at higher rates than other foods. It also identified an association between red meat consumption and levels of PFOS, one of the most common and dangerous PFAS compounds.

The authors said the findings highlight the chemicals’ ubiquity and the many ways they can end up in the food supply.

“The results definitely point toward the need for environmental stewardship, and keeping PFAS out of the environment and food chain,” said Megan Romano, a Dartmouth researcher and lead author. “Now we’re in a situation where they’re everywhere and are going to stick around even if we do aggressive remediation.”

PFAS are a class of about 16,000 compounds used to make products that resist water, stains and heat. They are called “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down and have been found to accumulate in humans. The chemicals are linked to cancer, birth defects, liver disease, thyroid disease, plummeting sperm counts and a range of other serious health problems.

Though regulators have focused on reining in pollution in water, food is thought to be the most common exposure route. The Food and Drug Administration, however, has drawn criticism for what some say is a failure to protect the nation’s food supply. Among other controversies, it altered its testing methods to make it appear as if the food it tests does not have PFAS in it when it actually does contain what many advocates say are concerning levels.

PFAS can end up contaminating food through a number of routes. In rice, the researchers suspect it stems from contaminated soil or agricultural water. Non-stick cookware also often contains the chemicals, or it could be in water used for cooking.

Researchers found higher levels of PFAS associated with eggs from backyard chickens, which Romano said could be attributed to the birds more commonly being fed with table scraps. PFAS-fouled sewage sludge, which is used as a cheap alternative to fertilizer, may also contaminate the soil from which chickens feed, and has been found to contaminate beef. The chemicals also could be in the birds’ feed.

In coffee, researchers suspect that the beans, water used for brewing, or soil could be contaminated. Previous research has also found coffee filters to be treated with PFAS, and paper cups or other food packaging also commonly contain the chemicals.

Seafood, meanwhile, has regularly been found to be contaminated with PFAS because water pollution is so widespread.

Public health advocates say a ban on the chemicals except for essential uses is the only way to begin addressing the problem broadly. Romano said the research found diets high in fruit, whole grain and higher dietary fiber were associated with lower levels of some PFAS, and eating a varied diet so no one protein source comprises too large of a proportion of intake is beneficial.

“That helps you not only reduce your exposure to PFAS but other contaminants we might anticipate are in food,” Romano said.

Soon after Labour forms a government, it will find itself in a new world. It now seems likely that Donald Trump will win the presidency of the United States. If he does, this should bring an end to our abiding fantasies about a special relationship.

It was always an illusion. After the astonishing, heroic intervention of the US in the second world war preserved us from invasion and fascism, we built a romantic fairytale of enduring love. But both countries act in their own interests. While the UK and Europe have leant on the US for security, the dominant power has long used us as an instrument of policy.

Our joint enterprise has often been devastating to other people. Take, to give just a few examples, the US-UK coup that overthrew Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran in 1953, the 20-year war in Afghanistan, the 2003 Iraq war, or the staunch support offered by Joe Biden and Rishi Sunak for the unfolding genocide in Gaza.

Our countries have also collaborated in developing a global trade and legal regime that favours capital over the democratic state. One example is the system known as investor-state dispute settlement, which grants offshore courts primacy over national sovereignty.

If Trump is installed in the White House again, the US government, always a questionable friend, is likely to become a clear threat to our peace, security and wellbeing. It will rip up what remains of global security and detente, environmental and human rights agreements, and international law. The age of multilateralism, flawed as it always was, would be over, and something much worse will take its place. In short, the UK and Europe will need to find the means of defending ourselves against a Trump regime and its allies. We might also need, as the lessons of the past century are unlearnt and the far right rises again, to defend ourselves against each other.

Trump has developed a special relationship; not with us, but with Vladimir Putin, to whom he defers as the iron dictator he would like to be. Russia sought to help Trump win in 2016, tried again in 2020 and has long backed Trump for 2024.

As if in return, when he was president, Trump announced that he trusted Putin ahead of US intelligence agencies. Subsequently, he praised Putin for his invasion of Ukraine, and has stated he would encourage Russia to attack any Nato member that doesn’t spend heavily on defence.

One result of this special relationship is that Trump, if elected, is likely to end US military support for Ukraine. This means that if European nations don’t step up, Putin will be able to complete his invasion. It seems unlikely that he will stop there. A Kremlin memo last year announced that Russia would take “symmetrical and asymmetrical measures necessary to suppress” such “unfriendly acts” as the use of sanctions. In February, the Danish defence minister warned that Russia could launch an attack on a Nato country within five years. Poland, the Baltic states … ? With a supporter in the White House and the possible collapse of Nato, why would Putin not pursue his advantage?

Ukraine’s strongest ally in western Europe, Emmanuel Macron, is now flailing, while Putin’s friends in Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria and Slovakia sense that history is on their side. When circumstances change, so should our positions, however disquieting it might be. I have long called for disarmament. This made sense when the Ministry of Defence concluded in 2003 that “there are currently no major conventional military threats to the UK or Nato … it is now clear that we no longer need to retain a capability against the re-emergence of a direct conventional strategic threat” and when Nato decided a few years later that “large-scale conventional aggression against the alliance will be highly unlikely”.

But the situation has changed. With great discomfort, I find myself open to arguments for rearmament. I now believe we need to enhance our conventional capabilities, both to support other European nations against Russia and – something that seemed unimaginable a few years ago – perhaps to defend ourselves.

Currently, according to a former senior official at the MoD, the UK’s forces would be unable to “fight and win an armed conflict of any scale”. We would rapidly run out of ammunition, could not prevent missile strikes and could not stop an attack on our territory.

Conversely, this is also a good moment for the UK government to rethink its position on nuclear weapons. It’s time to recognise that our “independent nuclear deterrent” has never been independent. Because key components are supplied and controlled by the US, we cannot operate it without US consent. So, if Trump regains the White House, it would not be a deterrent, either: Putin knows we cannot use it. The UK’s nuclear programme is a £172bn heap of bricks. Why waste more money on it?

We are faced throughout our lives with a choice of consistencies. Either our values or our positions can remain unchanged, but not both. Consistently defending our values – such as opposition to imperialism, fascism and wars of aggression – demands that we should be ready to alter our assessments as the nature of these threats changes.

The UK’s foreign policy will require other sharp turns. On Israel and Palestine, a Labour government should defend peace, justice and international law. Following Keir Starmer’s initial moral failure, Labour’s position has begun to change: David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, has said that if the international criminal court (ICC) issues an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu, he would be prepared to implement it. Now he should also demand a complete embargo of British arms to Israel.

As Trump rips up US environmental commitments, other countries will have to redouble theirs to avoid planetary catastrophe. It will do us no economic harm to embrace 21st-century technologies while the US remains in the fossil age. All this becomes especially urgent in the UK if that gurning minion of both Trump and Putin, Nigel Farage, achieves a foothold in politics. The collaborators are already lining up to betray their country.

Independence from the US is difficult, hazardous and uncertain of success. But remaining a loyal servant of the US if Trump becomes commander-in-chief is a certain formula for disaster. There is nothing we can do to stop his election, except to plead with US voters not to let a convicted felon, coup plotter, sex assaulter, liar, fraud and wannabe dictator into the White House. But we can seek to defend ourselves against it.

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It resembles an enormous, malevolent robot from 1980s sci-fi but West Japan Railway’s new humanoid employee was designed with nothing more sinister than a spot of painting and gardening in mind.

Starting this month, the large machine with enormous arms, a crude, disproportionately small Wall-E-like head and coke-bottle eyes mounted on a truck – which can drive on rails – will be put to use for maintenance work on the company’s network.

Its operator sits in a cockpit on the truck, “seeing” through the robot’s eyes via cameras and operating its powerful limbs and hands remotely.

With a vertical reach of 12 metres (40ft), the machine can use various attachments for its arms to carry objects as heavy as 40kg (88lb), hold a brush to paint or use a chainsaw.

For now, the robot’s primary task will focus on trimming tree branches along rails and painting metal frames that hold cables above trains, the company said.

The technology will help fill worker shortages in ageing Japan as well as reduce accidents such as workers falling from high places or suffering electric shocks, the company said.

“In the future, we hope to use machines for all kinds of maintenance operations of our infrastructure,” and this should provide a case study for how to deal with the labour shortage, company president Kazuaki Hasegawa told a recent press conference.